Senator Cynthia Lummis strongly rebuked criticism from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon regarding CLARITY ACT. She rallied support for the bill as it nears a vote in the full Senate.
Senator Lummis Dismisses JPMorgan’s Take on CLARITY Act
The comments came as the CLARITY Act is now officially on the Senate Legislative Calendar, under General Orders. It represents a further advance for the crypto bill after a bipartisan vote of 15-9 in the Senate Banking Committee last month.
In a CNBC interview, Senator Lummis challenged Dimon’s opposition to the bill. She also addressed his previous comments regarding the digital asset industry.
“Jamie Dimon is absolutely wrong. He either hasn’t read the bill or he wants to mislead people. Let’s put the best construction on this: he hasn’t read the bill,” Lummis said. Lummis said.
The Wyoming senator contended that the bill has a lot of the same anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act provisions that exist in the banking world.
There are “16 or 17 references” in the bill which have an explicit focus on compliance obligations for digital asset businesses, Senator Lummis said.
A major point of debate in current negotiations includes federal laws on how to treat decentralized finance developers. Lawmakers are trying to balance the need to protect software developers and developers of blockchain-based applications with law enforcement concerns, Lummis noted.
“People who write code for Bitcoin products, for example, don’t know when they put their product out there who’s using it,” she said. Senator Lummis further added, “They should be protected from liability since they don’t know who the user is.”
Lummis warned that software developers who work with companies that directly issue or manage digital assets need to be separated. Moreover, she believes that the banking compliance frameworks are adequate for the companies but not the code writers.
CLARITY Gains A Step Forward In The Senate
Amid this backdrop, the CLARITY Act was added to the Senate calendar. This move came after committee amendments were incorporated into the latest version of the bill.
However, a Senate floor vote is not confirmed as of yet. Meanwhile, the Congress is resuming its session on Wednesday, June 3. Thus, industry stakeholders are expecting an update on a full Senate vote.
Senator Lummis declared, “We now need to wrap the CLARITY Act, which dealt with the SEC portion of jurisdiction, with the Agriculture Committee’s product, fold that in with ethics. And then finally wrap it with some ethics legislation, into one product that’s presented on the floor of the Senate and then need 60 votes for cloture.”